FG plans N180,000 varsity fees per session - SSANU

After initial seven days warning strike action, the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) has ordered its members to embark on an indefinite action that may totally cripple activity in the nation's universities in protest against government's plan to increase students tuition fees to N180,000 per session. Rising from an emergency National Executive meeting in Abuja at the weekend, the association resolved to protest the anti-people policy that is aimed at protecting and granting access to the children of only the rich and those in position of authority in the country. N.B Visit www.campusflava.com for updates and information related to other schools.   National President of SSANU, Comrade Promise Adewusi who read the resolutions of his association's emergency meeting, said that it was worrisome that while minimum wage still stood at N5,000, the government was moving to impose on the same parents a whopping N180,000 fee per child. According to Comrade Adewusi, "Even at the paltry N20,000 or N25,000 they pay in the federal universities, most parents can still not conveniently and comfortably do this. If this is allowed to happen, what that means in effect is that education will be priced out of the reach of the children of the poor, which we do not want. It means the ministers will continue to produce ministers, the governors will continue to produce governors and the peasants, the labourers, the gardeners will produce gardeners because they will not go to school." The SSANU president further said; "So, we want a fair playing field because we have been blackmailed in most times that, look, if you want an enhanced condition of service, accept introduction of school fees in our universities. We have always maintained this solidarity with our students because even our children are in these universities, because we cannot afford to send our own children out of the country, like other government public functionaries who hardly have any of their children in Nigerian universities." In this wise, Comrade Adewusi announced that the association, having painstakingly studied the consequences of the government's plan, directed all of its members to resume its suspended strike with effect from July 20, 2009 even as it also rejected the proposed salary increase for its members but insisted on the full implementation of the product of its collective bargaining with Federal Government. According to Comrade Adewusi; "What this means, is that the universities have to be shut down, because our members are the one maintaining the services that keep the students in comfort, now we cannot guarantee this comfort. I think the best advice in this circumstance is for parents to reach out to their wards and their children because we cannot guarantee that there will be facilities that will continue to sustain them in classes and hostels. For avoidance of any untoward thing, even our members in the clinics, the doctors and nurses, we are withdrawing them until government sees reason. We are withdrawing all our personnel from the works and services, electricity, water." The SSANU national president also described the purported inauguration of the minimum wage committee last week Thursday as an exercise in futility saying that it was merely a ploy by government to buy time like what it did to members of the association in the past, if allowed to get away with it. Adewusi stressed; "It will just be for the purpose of buying time and by the time they take us on a rollercoaster and rigmarole for the next two years, they will say gentlemen, elections are here and a new government will be inaugurated soon, why not wait for the new government to be the one to implement it. It is difficult for us to trust the government with what they have done with this." Commenting on universities funding, Comrade Adewusi said that it was one of the issues that arose from the 2001 agreement during which it was agreed that government was supposed to progressively improve funding, adding that when former President Olusegun Obasanjo came, funding was inadequate but the administration managed to get to 11 per cent.              By  AMOS DUNIA, Abuja